Time is running out to pass on memories

Vera Gara, 75, is in a hurry.

Vera Gara — whose father died in Bergen-Belsen — and other Holocaust survivors visit schools to tell students their stories.

By:Joanna Smith Published on Mon Apr 06 2009

Vera Gara, 75, is in a hurry.

This is not because she is a busy woman, although she certainly is. She has grandchildren involved in science fairs and spelling bees. The glass doors in her dining room shattered and the contractor has yet to replace them. She is helping to organize a grand dinner commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who rescued Jews in Budapest from being deported to concentration camps during the Second World War.

She is in a hurry because she worries about how much time she, and others like her, have left for another project: Visiting schools to tell students her story of surviving the Holocaust.

She tells them of being born in Vienna, the only child in a well-off family, owners of a salami factory, and of fleeing with her parents to their native Hungary after her father was arrested – for fraud, officially, but really for being Jewish.

She tells them of Bergen-Belsen, where her father died of blood poisoning, but really of hopelessness. "He was 63 years old. He gave up. That was the real reason," she says.

"He had blood poisoning from the beatings and the lack of food ... but the hope was taken away and when somebody has given up, that was it."

She tells them of never feeling normal again. She feels too suspicious and too protective. She once hid her daughter's Star of David beneath her shirt on a visit to Vienna.

"We are dying out," she says over tea and cookies in her Ottawa home. "Believe it or not, we are not going to be here forever. That makes it even harder, because we are in a rush.

"Books, films are all very wonderful," she says. "But you have to see the person. ... I'm one of the youngest. Who knows what happens tomorrow?"

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